Why, worthy father, what have we to lose?
—The law
Protects us not. Then why should we be tender
To let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us!
Play judge and executioner.
—Cymbeline.
While the Teton thus enacted his subtle and characteristic part, not a
sound broke the stillness of the surrounding prairie. The whole band
lay at their several posts, waiting, with the well-known patience of
the natives, for the signal which was to summon them to action. To the
eyes of the anxious spectators who occupied the little eminence,
already described as the position of the captives, the scene presented
the broad, solemn view of a waste, dimly lighted by the glimmering rays
of a clouded moon. The place of the encampment was marked by a gloom
deeper than that which faintly shadowed out the courses of the bottoms,
and here and there a brighter streak tinged the rolling summits of the
ridges. As for the rest, it was the deep, imposing quiet of a desert.
But to those who so well knew how much was brooding beneath this mantle
of stillness and night, it was a scene of high and wild excitement.
Their anxiety gradually increased, as minute after minute passed away,
and not the smallest sound of life arose out of the calm and darkness
which enveloped the brake. The breathing of Paul grew louder and
deeper, and more than once Ellen trembled at she knew not what, as she
felt the quivering of his active frame, while she leaned dependently on
his arm for support.
The shallow honesty, as well as the besetting infirmity of Weucha, have
already been exhibited. The reader, therefore, will not be surprised to
learn that he was the first to forget the regulations he had himself
imposed. It was at the precise moment when we left Mahtoree yielding to
his nearly ungovernable delight, as he surveyed the number and quality
of Ishmael’s beasts of burden, that the man he had selected to watch
his captives chose to indulge in the malignant pleasure of tormenting
those it was his duty to protect. Bending his head nigh the ear of the
trapper, the savage rather muttered than whispered—
“If the Tetons lose their great chief by the hands of the
Long-knives[9], old shall die as well as young!”
“Life is the gift of the Wahcondah,” was the unmoved reply. “The
burnt-wood warrior must submit to his laws, as well as his other
children. Men only die when he chooses; and no Dahcotah can change the
hour.”
“Look!” returned the savage, thrusting the blade of his knife before
the face of his captive. “Weucha is the Wahcondah of a dog.”
The old man raised his eyes to the fierce visage of his keeper, and,
for a moment, a gleam of honest and powerful disgust shot from their
deep cells; but it instantly passed away, leaving in its place an
expression of commiseration, if not of sorrow.
“Why should one made in the real image of God suffer his natur’ to be
provoked by a mere effigy of reason?” he said in English, and in tones
much louder than those in which Weucha had chosen to pitch the
conversation. The latter profited by the unintentional offence of his
captive, and, seizing him by the thin, grey locks, that fell from
beneath his cap, was on the point of passing the blade of his knife in
malignant triumph around their roots, when a long, shrill yell rent the
air, and was instantly echoed from the surrounding waste, as if a
thousand demons opened their throats in common at the summons. Weucha
relinquished his grasp, and uttered a cry of exultation.
“Now!” shouted Paul, unable to control his impatience any longer, “now,
old Ishmael, is the time to show the native blood of Kentucky! Fire
low, boys—level into the swales, for the red skins are settling to the
very earth!”
His voice was, however, lost, or rather unheeded, in the midst of the
shrieks, shouts, and yells that were, by this time, bursting from fifty
mouths on every side of him. The guards still maintained their posts at
the side of the captives, but it was with that sort of difficulty with
which steeds are restrained at the starting-post, when expecting the
signal to commence the trial of speed. They tossed their arms wildly in
the air, leaping up and down more like exulting children than sober
men, and continued to utter the most frantic cries.
In the midst of this tumultuous disorder a rushing sound was heard,
similar to that which might be expected to precede the passage of a
flight of buffaloes, and then came the flocks and cattle of Ishmael in
one confused and frightened drove.
“They have robbed the squatter of his beasts!” said the attentive
trapper. “The reptiles have left him as hoofless as a beaver!” He was
yet speaking, when the whole body of the terrified animals rose the
little acclivity, and swept by the place where he stood, followed by a
band of dusky and demon-like looking figures, who pressed madly on
their rear.
The impulse was communicated to the Teton horses, long accustomed to
sympathise in the untutored passions of their owners, and it was with
difficulty that the keepers were enabled to restrain their impatience.
At this moment, when all eyes were directed to the passing whirlwind of
men and beasts, the trapper caught the knife from the hands of his
inattentive keeper, with a power that his age would have seemed to
contradict, and, at a single blow, severed the thong of hide which
connected the whole of the drove. The wild animals snorted with joy and
terror, and tearing the earth with their heels, they dashed away into
the broad prairies, in a dozen different directions.
Weucha turned upon his assailant with the ferocity and agility of a
tiger. He felt for the weapon of which he had been so suddenly
deprived, fumbled with impotent haste for the handle of his tomahawk,
and at the same moment glanced his eyes after the flying cattle, with
the longings of a Western Indian. The struggle between thirst for
vengeance and cupidity was severe but short. The latter quickly
predominated in the bosom of one whose passions were proverbially
grovelling; and scarcely a moment intervened between the flight of the
animals and the swift pursuit of the guards. The trapper had continued
calmly facing his foe, during the instant of suspense that succeeded
his hardy act; and now that Weucha was seen following his companions,
he pointed after the dark train, saying, with his deep and nearly
inaudible laugh—
“Red-natur’ is red-natur’, let it show itself on a prairie, or in a
forest! A knock on the head would be the smallest reward to him who
should take such a liberty with a Christian sentinel; but there goes
the Teton after his horses as if he thought two legs as good as four in
such a race! And yet the imps will have every hoof of them afore the
day sets in, because it’s reason ag’in instinct. Poor reason, I allow;
but still there is a great deal of the man in an Indian. Ah’s me! your
Delawares were the redskins of which America might boast; but few and
scattered is that mighty people, now! Well! the traveller may just make
his pitch where he is; he has plenty of water, though natur’ has
cheated him of the pleasure of stripping the ’arth of its lawful trees.
He has seen the last of his four-footed creatures, or I am but little
skilled in Sioux cunning.”
“Had we not better join the party of Ishmael?” said the bee-hunter.
“There will be a regular fight about this matter, or the old fellow has
suddenly grown chicken-hearted.”
“No—no—no,” hastily exclaimed Ellen.
She was stopped by the trapper, who laid his hand gently on her mouth,
as he answered—
“Hist—hist!—the sound of voices might bring us into danger. Is your
friend,” he added, turning to Paul, “a man of spirit enough?”
“Don’t call the squatter a friend of mine!” interrupted the youth. “I
never yet harboured with one who could not show hand and zeal for the
land which fed him.”
“Well—well. Let it then be acquaintance. Is he a man to maintain his
own, stoutly by dint of powder and lead?”
“His own! ay, and that which is not his own, too! Can you tell me, old
trapper, who held the rifle that did the deed for the sheriff’s deputy,
that thought to rout the unlawful settlers who had gathered nigh the
Buffaloe lick in old Kentucky? I had lined a beautiful swarm that very
day into the hollow of a dead beech, and there lay the people’s officer
at its roots, with a hole directly through the ‘grace of God;’ which he
carried in his jacket pocket covering his heart, as if he thought a bit
of sheepskin was a breastplate against a squatter’s bullet! Now, Ellen,
you needn’t be troubled for it never strictly was brought home to him;
and there were fifty others who had pitched in that neighbourhood with
just the same authority from the law.”
The poor girl shuddered, struggling powerfully to suppress the sigh
which arose in spite of her efforts, as if from the very bottom of her
heart.
Thoroughly satisfied that he understood the character of the emigrants,
by the short but comprehensive description conveyed in Paul’s reply,
the old man raised no further question concerning the readiness of
Ishmael to revenge his wrongs, but rather followed the train of thought
which was suggested to his experience, by the occasion.
“Each one knows the ties which bind him to his fellow-creatures best,”
he answered. “Though it is greatly to be mourned that colour, and
property, and tongue, and l’arning should make so wide a difference in
those who, after all, are but the children of one father! Howsomever,”
he continued, by a transition not a little characteristic of the
pursuits and feelings of the man, “as this is a business in which there
is much more likelihood of a fight than need for a sermon, it is best
to be prepared for what may follow.—Hush! there is a movement below; it
is an equal chance that we are seen.”
“The family is stirring,” cried Ellen, with a tremor that announced
nearly as much terror at the approach of her friends, as she had before
manifested at the presence of her enemies. “Go, Paul, leave me. You, at
least, must not be seen!”
“If I leave you, Ellen, in this desert before I see you safe in the
care of old Ishmael, at least, may I never hear the hum of another bee,
or, what is worse, fail in sight to line him to his hive!”
“You forget this good old man. He will not leave me. Though I am sure,
Paul, we have parted before, where there has been more of a desert than
this.”
“Never! These Indians may come whooping back, and then where are you!
Half way to the Rocky Mountains before a man can fairly strike the line
of your flight. What think you, old trapper? How long may it be before
these Tetons, as you call them, will be coming for the rest of old
Ishmael’s goods and chattels?”
“No fear of them,” returned the old man, laughing in his own peculiar
and silent manner; “I warrant me the devils will be scampering after
their beasts these six hours yet! Listen! you may hear them in the
willow bottoms at this very moment; ay, your real Sioux cattle will run
like so many long-legged elks. Hist! crouch again into the grass, down
with ye both; as I’m a miserable piece of clay, I heard the ticking of
a gunlock!”
The trapper did not allow his companions time to hesitate, but dragging
them both after him, he nearly buried his own person in the fog of the
prairie, while he was speaking. It was fortunate that the senses of the
aged hunter remained so acute, and that he had lost none of his
readiness of action. The three were scarcely bowed to the ground, when
their ears were saluted with the well-known, sharp, short, reports of
the western rifle, and instantly, the whizzing of the ragged lead was
heard, buzzing within dangerous proximity of their heads.
“Well done, young chips! well done, old block!” whispered Paul, whose
spirits no danger nor situation could entirely depress. “As pretty a
volley, as one would wish to bear on the wrong end of a rifle! What
d’ye say, trapper! here is likely to be a three-cornered war. Shall I
give ’em as good as they send?”
“Give them nothing but fair words,” returned the other, hastily, “or
you are both lost.”
“I’m not certain it would much mend the matter, if I were to speak with
my tongue instead of the piece,” said Paul, in a tone half jocular half
bitter.
“For the sake of heaven, do not let them hear you!” cried Ellen. “Go,
Paul, go; you can easily quit us now!”
Several shots in quick succession, each sending its dangerous
messenger, still nearer than the preceding discharge, cut short her
speech, no less in prudence than in terror.
“This must end,” said the trapper, rising with the dignity of one bent
only on the importance of his object. “I know not what need ye may
have, children, to fear those you should both love and honour, but
something must be done to save your lives. A few hours more or less can
never be missed from the time of one who has already numbered so many
days; therefore I will advance. Here is a clear space around you.
Profit by it as you need, and may God bless and prosper each of you, as
ye deserve!”
Without waiting for any reply, the trapper walked boldly down the
declivity in his front, taking the direction of the encampment, neither
quickening his pace in trepidation, nor suffering it to be retarded by
fear. The light of the moon fell brighter for a moment on his tall,
gaunt, form, and served to warn the emigrants of his approach.
Indifferent, however to this unfavourable circumstance, he held his
way, silently and steadily towards the copse, until a threatening voice
met him with a challenge of—
“Who comes; friend or foe?”
“Friend,” was the reply; “one who has lived too long to disturb the
close of life with quarrels.”
“But not so long as to forget the tricks of his youth,” said Ishmael,
rearing his huge frame from beneath the slight covering of a low bush,
and meeting the trapper, face to face; “old man, you have brought this
tribe of red devils upon us, and to-morrow you will be sharing the
booty.”
“What have you lost?” calmly demanded the trapper.
“Eight as good mares as ever travelled in gears, besides a foal that is
worth thirty of the brightest Mexicans that bear the face of the King
of Spain. Then the woman has not a cloven hoof for her dairy, or her
loom, and I believe even the grunters, foot sore as they be, are
ploughing the prairie. And now, stranger,” he added, dropping the butt
of his rifle on the hard earth, with a violence and clatter that would
have intimidated one less firm than the man he addressed, “how many of
these creatures may fall to your lot?”
“Horses have I never craved, nor even used; though few have journeyed
over more of the wide lands of America than myself, old and feeble as I
seem. But little use is there for a horse among the hills and woods of
York—that is, as York was, but as I greatly fear York is no longer—as
for woollen covering and cow’s milk, I covet no such womanly fashions!
The beasts of the field give me food and raiment. No, I crave no cloth
better than the skin of a deer, nor any meat richer than his flesh.”
The sincere manner of the trapper, as he uttered this simple
vindication, was not entirely thrown away on the emigrant, whose dull
nature was gradually quickening into a flame, that might speedily have
burst forth with dangerous violence. He listened like one who doubted,
not entirely convinced: and he muttered between his teeth the
denunciation, with which a moment before he intended to precede the
summary vengeance he had certainly meditated.
“This is brave talking,” he at length grumbled; “but to my judgment,
too lawyer-like, for a straight forward, fair-weather, and foul-weather
hunter.”
“I claim to be no better than a trapper,” the other meekly answered.
“Hunter or trapper—there is little difference. I have come, old man,
into these districts because I found the law sitting too tight upon me,
and am not over fond of neighbours who can’t settle a dispute without
troubling a justice and twelve men; but I didn’t come to be robb’d of
my plunder, and then to say thank’ee to the man who did it!”
“He, who ventures far into the prairies, must abide by the ways of its
owners.”
“Owners!” echoed the squatter, “I am as rightful an owner of the land I
stand on, as any governor in the States! Can you tell me, stranger,
where the law or the reason, is to be found, which says that one man
shall have a section, or a town, or perhaps a county to his use, and
another have to beg for earth to make his grave in? This is not nature,
and I deny that it is law. That is, your legal law.”
“I cannot say that you are wrong,” returned the trapper, whose opinions
on this important topic, though drawn from very different premises,
were in singular accordance with those of his companion, “and I have
often thought and said as much, when and where I have believed my voice
could be heard. But your beasts are stolen by them who claim to be
masters of all they find in the deserts.”
“They had better not dispute that matter with a man who knows better,”
said the other in a portentous voice, though it seemed deep and
sluggish as he who spoke.
“I call myself a fair trader, and one who gives to his chaps as good as
he receives. You saw the Indians?”
“I did—they held me a prisoner, while they stole into your camp.”
“It would have been more like a white man and a Christian, to have let
me known as much in better season,” retorted Ishmael, casting another
ominous sidelong glance at the trapper, as if still meditating evil. “I
am not much given to call every man, I fall in with, cousin, but colour
should be something, when Christians meet in such a place as this. But
what is done, is done, and cannot be mended, by words. Come out of your
ambush, boys; here is no one but the old man: he has eaten of my bread,
and should be our friend; though there is such good reason to suspect
him of harbouring with our enemies.”
The trapper made no reply to the harsh suspicion which the other did
not scruple to utter without the smallest delicacy, notwithstanding the
explanations and denials to which he had just listened. The summons of
the unnurtured squatter brought an immediate accession to their party.
Four or five of his sons made their appearance from beneath as many
covers, where they had been posted under the impression that the
figures they had seen, on the swell of the prairie, were a part of the
Sioux band. As each man approached, and dropped his rifle into the
hollow of his arm, he cast an indolent but enquiring glance at the
stranger, though neither of them expressed the least curiosity to know
whence he had come or why he was there. This forbearance, however,
proceeded only in part, from the sluggishness of their common temper;
for long and frequent experience in scenes of a similar character, had
taught them the virtue of discretion. The trapper endured their sullen
scrutiny with the steadiness of one as practised as themselves, and
with the entire composure of innocence. Content with the momentary
examination he had made, the eldest of the group, who was in truth the
delinquent sentinel by whose remissness the wily Mahtoree had so well
profited, turned towards his father and said bluntly—
“If this man is all that is left of the party I saw on the upland,
yonder, we haven’t altogether thrown away our ammunition.”
“Asa, you are right,” said the father, turning suddenly on the trapper,
a lost idea being recalled by the hint of his son. “How is it,
stranger; there were three of you, just now, or there is no virtue in
moonlight?”
“If you had seen the Tetons racing across the prairies, like so many
black-looking evil ones, on the heels of your cattle, my friend, it
would have been an easy matter to have fancied them a thousand.”
“Ay, for a town bred boy, or a skeary woman; though for that matter,
there is old Esther; she has no more fear of a red-skin than of a
suckling cub, or of a wolf pup. I’ll warrant ye, had your thievish
devils made their push by the light of the sun, the good woman would
have been smartly at work among them, and the Siouxes would have found
she was not given to part with her cheese and her butter without a
price. But there’ll come a time, stranger, right soon, when justice
will have its dues, and that too, without the help of what is called
the law. We ar’ of a slow breed, it may be said, and it is often said,
of us; but slow is sure; and there ar’ few men living, who can say they
ever struck a blow, that they did not get one as hard in return, from
Ishmael Bush.”
“Then has Ishmael Bush followed the instinct of the beasts rather than
the principle which ought to belong to his kind,” returned the stubborn
trapper. “I have struck many a blow myself, but never have I felt the
same ease of mind that of right belongs to a man who follows his
reason, after slaying even a fawn when there was no call for his meat
or hide, as I have felt at leaving a Mingo unburied in the woods, when
following the trade of open and honest warfare.”
“What, you have been a soldier, have you, trapper! I made a forage or
two among the Cherokees, when I was a lad myself; and I followed Mad
Anthony,[10] one season, through the beeches; but there was altogether
too much tatooing and regulating among his troops for me; so I left him
without calling on the paymaster to settle my arrearages. Though, as
Esther afterwards boasted, she had made such use of the pay-ticket,
that the States gained no great sum, by the oversight. You have heard
of such a man as mad Anthony, if you tarried long among the soldiers.”
“I fou’t my last battle, as I hope, under his orders,” returned the
trapper, a gleam of sunshine shooting from his dim eyes, as if the
event was recollected with pleasure, and then a sudden shade of sorrow
succeeding, as though he felt a secret admonition against dwelling on
the violent scenes in which he had so often been an actor. “I was
passing from the States on the sea-shore into these far regions, when I
cross’d the trail of his army, and I fell in, on his rear, just as a
looker-on; but when they got to blows, the crack of my rifle was heard
among the rest, though to my shame it may be said, I never knew the
right of the quarrel as well as a man of threescore and ten should know
the reason of his acts afore he takes mortal life, which is a gift he
never can return!”
“Come, stranger,” said the emigrant, his rugged nature a good deal
softened when he found that they had fought on the same side in the
wild warfare of the west, “it is of small account, what may be the
ground-work of the disturbance, when it’s a Christian ag’in a savage.
We shall hear more of this horse-stealing to-morrow; to-night we can do
no wiser or safer thing than to sleep.”
So saying, Ishmael deliberately led the way back towards his rifled
encampment, and ushered the man, whose life a few minutes before had
been in real jeopardy from his resentment, into the presence of his
family. Here, with a very few words of explanation, mingled with scarce
but ominous denunciations against the plunderers, he made his wife
acquainted with the state of things on the prairie, and announced his
own determination to compensate himself for his broken rest, by
devoting the remainder of the night to sleep.
The trapper gave his ready assent to the measure, and adjusted his
gaunt form on the pile of brush that was offered him, with as much
composure as a sovereign could resign himself to sleep, in the security
of his capital and surrounded by his armed protectors. The old man did
not close his eyes, however, until he had assured himself that Ellen
Wade was among the females of the family, and that her relation, or
lover, whichever he might be, had observed the caution of keeping
himself out of view: after which he slept, though with the peculiar
watchfulness of one long accustomed to vigilance, even in the hours of
deepest night.
[9] The whites are so called by the Indians, from their swords.
[10] Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian distinguished in the war of the
revolution, and subsequently against the Indians of the west, for his
daring as a general, by which he gained from his followers the title
of Mad Anthony. General Wayne was the son of the person mentioned in
the life of West as commanding the regiment which excited his military
ardour.